A Lonely Path
by Stargazer Nataku
Summary: As Faramir enters his mother’s room for the first time in thirty years, he remembers the lonely road that has brought him to this place.


A Lonely Path

            The door opens with a long, slow creak as a room precious within my childhood memories appears before me.  I step across the threshold, pausing in my errand, aware that this is the first time I have ever walked this room alone.  I did spend many hours here when I was young, and they were the happiest that I can remember in my thirty-seven years of life.  This room was my mother's domain, where she spent her hours working, reading to my brother and I, or simply watching us play with the half-smile I remember so well on her face and in her eyes.

            She was a beautiful woman, I remember, and though my brother and I did not often speak of her, he once told me that I resembled her.  What I do remember, beside that small half-smile and the love in her eyes, was the feeling I had whenever she was near.  In those days, the room seemed to fill with her presence and I was always acutely aware she was near.  As young as I was, I recognized the brightness she brought to the room, even in the darkest days of winter.  She had a peaceful spirit, and whoever came into her presence was affected by it.  I remember even my father would become still, and a smile would cross his severe facade as even his stern nature would become gentler, almost boyish.  He did not realize I saw, young as I was.

            I am glad now, thinking back on those days as I cross the threshold into the room, that I did not see the future before us.  If I had, I may have clung to her, refused to let her go out of fear of the long years to come.  Yet I did not know, and though I wept as she said her last farewell, I took my brother's hand and turned my back to her without protesting, without fighting to remain by her side for another minute, another precious hour…time so quickly lost forever.  I was only five.

            It has been, I reflect, thirty years since I last set foot in this room.  Thirty years since the day I took my brother's hand and left my beautiful mother's side forever.  It seemed to me then that I was the one who was lost, instead of her, for she had been the one to whom I had run when my dreams became nightmares and I awoke terrified and drenched in sweat.  I knew that the smiling, peaceful side of my father I had seen through my childish eyes was lost, and that I could not turn to him for my comfort.  I saw a shadow of it sometimes, when he looked upon my older brother, but like my father from that day forth, that look was just a remainder of what had been…a remainder of what could have been.

            My father turned such loving eyes upon my brother and honored him as he honored no one else after my mother's death.  Yet he always turned eyes filled with loathing on me, as if he hated something I was or perhaps even something of which I reminded him.  He only spoke sharply to me when he was forced to notice me at all; I never made the mistake of turning to him in my fear.

            It was my brother then, to whom I turned.  My brother, who tried valiantly to take her place in my life, who would take the time even when he was weary from his day's duties to read to me and to tell me stories that our mother had told him.  It was my brother who opened his bed to me in the dead of the night when I was awakened by a nightmare too strong and too real to ignore.  In return, I idolized him as all I ever wanted to be, all I ever thought as perfect.

            Indeed he was not perfect.  He was only a man, which I saw as I grew older, but in my eyes he was all I ever wanted to be, in some secret part of me, that hoped and yearned for our father's approval…approval I never received.  Yet Boromir grew to be all I needed, though I don't think he ever understood me.  But as he could not, so I could not be anything other than I was and yet am.  But our differences never mattered, not between us.

Yet he too was taken from me too soon, and I was gifted only one last glimpse of my beloved brother, his eyes closed forever.  It was only afterwards, when I heard the whole story of his death and the days before it, that I appreciated that last glimpse of his familiar face and the peace resting upon it.  My brother was a strong man, a warrior, and he died a death of which he would have been proud.  He redeemed himself, and proved his strength, though he had failed the test of the Ring.  Yet even that, with the benefit of hindsight, was not a failure, but the turning point from which all events that happened afterwards were defined.  In the end, my brother got his lifelong wish, to be the agent that saved our people from the ever-growing darkness, and I must not begrudge him that, though his loss still burns in my heart.

            I have always had the blessing of people on whom I can depend, at every stage in my life.  First, my mother filled that role, but she was lost too soon, and has long since faded into a ghost of a memory.  Then my beloved brother was torn from me and, though I am proud of the way he died, it did not and does not ease the pain at his loss.  When Boromir left our city I had no one it seemed, for my father's heart was ever closed to me, and I was left to face my deepest fears and hardest battles without another by my side.  Yet in the end, when I walked in the dark dreams of death, they have said that my father turned to me and showed the love he did indeed bear for me, though it was long hidden and came too late for me to know it.  

Yet it gives me comfort to know this, that the words he spoke when he told me he wished I had gone in my brother's stead and taken my brother's place in death were only spoken in grief and not in hate.  I yearned to tell him how I wished it had indeed been me to make that ultimate sacrifice, how I wished that my brother would come striding into the room as he always had, with such pride and strength, and laugh at me for being foolish.  I desired to give my father what he wanted, the older son he loved so well, instead of me, the lesser.  But I could not.  Fate did not allow me to take the long journey that Boromir took without hesitation.  Boromir departed alone, and I remained behind.  Always behind.

They say he sat beside my bed as I wandered in those dark dreams of death, never speaking, ever mourning.  He was there as I fell into that grim sleep, and my King was there when I awoke.  He drew me back to life and to hope, and I found renewed purpose in his face, the face of a man I knew I would follow without question or hesitation.

            It is he who told me of my father's death, though it was many days before he allowed the whole tale to be told.  I am glad of this, for the truth of my father's madness and the fire that consumed him was, and yet is, a heavy burden to bear.  It was so needless, so horrific, and so disturbing that my father despaired so much he would have taken my life along with his.  He earned every moment of the peace now fallen upon us, yet he was denied it by the madness and despair he saw in his palantír.  I wish now that I had known of that accursed object; I could have acted to help him before it was too late.  Yet that is merely a hope that could never have any foundation, it is only a desire born of my grief.  I know he never would have abandoned his path, for he was a proud and willful man and I could not have swayed him, and now he too is gone.

            I stand another moment in silence, mourning, trying to position those who I loved back into the places they once occupied in this room, which seems to be a shrine to the happy memories of my life, before my gaze falls upon a chest at the far end of the room and, reminded of my errand, I cross the room and kneel down before it and open it.  There is a muted scent released into the air, a familiar smell, comforting, as I carefully look through the contents of the trunk until I find what I am searching for.  I am glad it is still here, the reason I have come.

            I withdraw it carefully, reverently, and replace everything where I found it within and drop the lid.  Standing, I carefully unwrap the cloak I have taken from the trunk and let it fall open before me.  It is exactly as I remember it from the winter days my mother wore it, years ago, and it has kept well with the passage of years.  A smile crosses my face as I examine it a moment, and then I fold it carefully and wrap it again.  I know my mother would not mind that I have taken this; she would be glad I have found someone to wear it in her stead, someone I can depend on, so that I will never need to face the future alone.  

            I smile as I pick up my gift, contented.  The grief at the loss of brother and father is not yet gone, and I do not think it ever shall be, as my mother's has never entirely left me, but I am not alone.  


End file.
